“Hey, I’m cold now. I’m going in.”
[You’ve been outside talking this whole time in this weather? Man. Youth. Tough.]
He kicked at the dirt under the bench roughly to shake it off his shoes and stood up. He’d thought only the sea was awful, but looking around now, this was an island completely surrounded by eerie mountains and water on all sides. The mountains were wild in their own way, and the water was wild in its own way. Practically the law of the jungle out here.
With a sigh that was half lament, he turned to head back home. Just then, something caught Hwichan’s eye.
The ice-cold winter sea. On top of a large black rock along the Samsam Island shoreline — known as Samsam Rock — someone was sitting half-bare. They had pants on, but their upper body was bare, as though they’d thrown their shirt off. The distance was too great to make out who it was clearly.
“……”
Without hanging up, Hwichan fixed his gaze far into the distance. All manner of complicated feelings passed across his pale face and scattered.
Then Hwichan spoke toward the other end of the call.
“Jeongsub. What’s the temperature in Seoul right now?”
[Huh? Hang on. Says minus 2 degrees?]
“Can you check what the weather is like on Samsam Island?”
[Uh…… give me a sec.]
The sound of typing came through. The answer that followed a moment later was one degree above zero.
One degree above zero. Warmer than Seoul, sure — but not warm enough to strip your shirt off and go swimming. Even at ten degrees above zero, the seawater is as cold as ice. In weather where the rivers were threatening to freeze over, how could anyone do that.
Hwichan stopped speaking and stared at the figure on the rock. A white, smooth silhouette. Maybe it was the good moonlight — whoever it was looked almost like a fairy.
“……”
Without realizing it, he swallowed.
Even at a glance, that was not the body of an elder. Then who could it be? The island’s one and only twenty-something, Lee Haeshin — it had to be.
Setting aside whether his physique was remarkable or not, there was only one person on this island capable of doing something that foolish. Well — there should only be one.
[Shin Hwichan? You fall asleep? Hello?]
Hwichan didn’t answer Jeongsub’s question. Like someone under a spell, he watched the half-naked young man.
His lines were straight and flowing, like the path of water. His wheat-colored hair moved like reeds at the water’s edge. He swung his arms and legs lightly, like a warm-up stretch, then dove into the water with a reach of his arms.
Hwichan flinched and nearly bolted toward the sea — but the young man who’d entered the water immediately surfaced and began floating on top of it, as though taking a nap. Then he swam away, gliding along like a fish.
[Hwichan, you little — I wake up for you and you’re asleep?]
His friend’s voice was growing increasingly annoyed.
“In this weather, at this hour — what do you think would happen if someone jumped bare into the sea?”
Hwichan asked, eyes still fixed on the water beyond. His tone was hazy, like someone not quite awake — but his eyes were bright and sharp, like a person who’d just spotted a star in the smog-filled Seoul sky.
[What would happen? They’d be done for, that’s what.]
After a brief silence, Hwichan opened his mouth again.
“Have you seen The Little Mermaid? The cartoon?”
A puff of air leaked out from the other end of the call.
[You little — you were asleep, weren’t you? You nodded off. Why are you suddenly going on about The Little Mermaid?]
Even to himself, it sounded a little out of nowhere. No, not a little — it was wildly out of left field, and frankly absurd.
Was it the late hour? Was drowsiness creeping in? Had he finally cracked under extreme stress and fried his brain? Was he actually hallucinating?
But for a hallucination, the figure he could see was far too vivid and clear. He pressed on, speaking toward his friend on the other end of the line, word by deliberate word.
“There’s no internet here, right? Can you look up whether there’s something like a mermaid legend on Samsam Island? Not a movie or cartoon — like a myth or folktale.”
[What? A myth? A folktale? Since when are you obsessed with mermaids?]
He didn’t genuinely believe Haeshin was a mermaid. Shin Hwichan was the type that, if someone told him about a luxury apartment with a ghost, he’d find the monthly rent of a tenant unable to rest peacefully in a luxury apartment far more frightening than the existence of the ghost itself.
He didn’t believe in things he couldn’t see with his own eyes. And yet — why was it that this person made him want to doubt himself into believing what he couldn’t see?
Come to think of it, the timing of the lightning strikes was particularly……
Maybe — just maybe — he wanted to believe it.
Could what I’d taken as iron-clad certainty have actually been true all along? What I thought was the open sea might actually have been stagnant water collected at the bottom of a well.
Hwichan’s heart beat in a way that felt unfamiliar. In a world as still and solitary as the deep sea, waves had begun to form. Then the sound of keyboard typing came through the phone.
[Hey, nothing. I can’t find any mermaid folktales.]
“……Yeah? Guess I’ve lost my mind. Never mind then.”
[Oh, wait. There’s no mermaid on Samsam Island but there is a Sea Dragon King folktale. Hang on.]
“What do you mean there’s something? A Sea Dragon King folktale?”
Hwichan narrowed his eyes, the way you would when trying to focus on music barely coming through a broken earphone. Soon his friend began reciting the folktale.
To summarize in one line — it was the story of a lovesick old man of the sea who had loved a woman from Samsam Island so deeply that he had flower seeds shipped directly from the mainland to offer her. No merfolk appeared, and no storm appeared.
“Are you dense? I said find a mermaid, not a Sea Dragon King.”
[They’re both from the sea, aren’t they. You complain even when I make the effort. Did you see something out there? Go ask him if he’s acquainted with the Sea Dragon King.]
If it had ended there, Hwichan wouldn’t have been left with this unsettled feeling. The problem was what came after.
Right before hanging up, his friend casually recited the epilogue to the folktale.
[Hey, there’s a follow-up to this folktale. Says the Sea Dragon King’s descendants on Samsam Island can’t fall in love with humans? That’s pretty unusual.]
“There’s a follow-up?”
Hwichan, who had been about to hang up, stilled his hand and brought the phone back to his ear.
[Says the Sea Dragon King of Samsam Island loved his children so fiercely that whenever his descendants fell in love with a mainlander, it would rain. Wow, total overprotective dad energy. But apparently this isn’t official. It’s only on some wiki, not on the county office’s website.]
It was similar to what Haeshin had said. No — almost exactly the same. That when the merfolk living on Samsam Island fell in love with a mainlander, a storm would come.
“Convert that to a PDF and send it to my email. I’ll read it properly when I have time.”
[What? Don’t tell me you’re doing some low-effort fantasy project. If it tanks, you’ll defer your graduation, and if it somehow works out, your professor will——]
The call cut off. Hwichan hung up without ceremony and stood there for a long while in the deep of the night, looking down at the small figure swimming in the sea.
The washed-out figure — presumed to be Haeshin, no, who could only be Lee Haeshin — glided through the ice-cold sea for over an hour, then stretched with visible contentment, walked out onto the shore, unhurriedly pulled on his clothes, and left the beach. It looked like a natural, long-established routine — as ordinary as going for a walk, eating a meal, going to sleep.
After Haeshin left. Hwichan walked down to the shore as if pulled by something, and dipped his palm into the shallow water just at the edge of the sand.
Just approaching and dipping his hand in left him feeling heavy and damp inside. The sea still felt like death. Cold enough to chill every knuckle to the bone. It was hard to believe that things that breathed actually lived inside it.
Could someone really swim for a whole hour in this water temperature without a wetsuit?
Maybe someone training for an ironman competition — but for someone soft and pale-skinned like Haeshin, it seemed impossible.
That night, Hwichan lay alone in his unlit room without even a blanket, wide awake until morning. It felt exactly like being submerged at the bottom of a dark current.
It’s an absurd thought, he knew — but what if Lee Haeshin really was…… a mermaid.
After turning the thought over for a long while, Hwichan laughed at himself and forced his eyes shut.
“I think I’ve finally lost it……”
***
The next day, a dreary drizzle fell from early in the morning. Thankfully, it wasn’t a violent rain.
